No Man's Sky. The marketing of both games emphasized their massive universes and freedom for the player to explore without limits. While these promises might set up Starfield as the next No Man's Sky, it's likely to be more different than many are expecting.
During the extended look at Starfield's world and gameplay, Todd Howard announced that the game would feature 1,000 fully explorable planets. Starfield's gameplay appears to offer a suite of mechanics and systems, including not only standard combat and exploration, but base-building, ship-building, and ship combat as well. These features have earned Starfield comparisons to No Man's Sky and other space RPGs, but its bold declaration of a massive, completely open universe is the primary topic of discussion. However, when looking at the broader context of the trailer and Bethesda's methodology, it's clear that Starfield will be its own beast entirely.
Starfield and No Man's Sky are bound to have fundamentally different universes due to the differing design philosophies and strategies of their developers. No Man's Sky also made many promises leading up to its release, but its focus was on pure exploration; its narrative was ancillary and largely served to encourage exploration. Bethesda's games are known to be much more traditional RPGs, with an emphasis on story. Of course, a hallmark of Bethesda games is being able to ignore the main story indefinitely, and given Starfield's size, players could certainly do so in favor of exploration. However, it's unlikely that Starfield will be purpose-built for that experience to the degree that No Man's Sky was. Since Starfield is capitalizing on the trend of open-world space exploration in games, it seems to place more of an emphasis on player agency, but there will still likely be a main story and a collection of planets on which most of the main content takes place.
No Man's Sky Makes Starfield's Universe Feel Small
While the supposed size of Starfield's universe would be impressive to see executed well by Bethesda, it would still be dwarfed by the sheer size of No Man's Sky. The universe of No Man's Sky contains over 18 quintillion procedurally generated seeds for planets that its players can explore at their leisure. Bethesda has yet to reveal how much content and variety will be present on any given planet, so Starfield's 1,000 planets could quickly lose their luster if the game's environments aren't engaging enough. Considering Starfield's numerous crafting and building systems, there will presumably be plenty of resources to grind for and items to loot, which will likely for much of the activities available on the game's procedurally-generated planets, but it's doubtful that the story will make substantial use of many of them.
The monotony of exploration can be broken up by vibrant visuals, but it remains to be seen how diverse Starfield's landscapes will be. No Man's Sky has a heavy focus on survival mechanics, which informs much of the game's planetary design. Its diverse biomes, harsh weather, and other environmental hazards could be considered unnecessary in more traditional RPGs, but they also help to keep exploration exciting. Survival mechanics aren't exactly alien to Bethesda, with Fallout 4 including a survival mode that increases the game's difficulty and realism. Bethesda could be pushing those boundaries, but otherwise, its planets are unlikely to include such a level of detail in those areas.
Starfield & No Man's Sky Are Different At Their Core
No Man's Sky is able to the massive weight of its ridiculous number of planets by making each one engaging to explore and pleasant to look at while doing so. Its art style is more exaggerated and fantastical than Starfield's, which enables its worlds to feel inherently more varied and unique. Since a major mechanic of No Man's Sky is the discovery of new planets, as well as unique species of flora and fauna, it was essential for the game's environment and creature design to be as dynamic as possible. When these landscapes are compared to the mottled browns and grays that dominated the extended Starfield trailer, the latter seems underwhelming. Starfield could actually learn from Skyrim's environments in order to make its worlds feel more diverse, but it might require the game to depart from the realistic aesthetic it has adopted.
Another element of No Man's Sky that helps to liven up its massive universe is the game's collaborative community. When a player discovers a given planet or species, they can log their discovery so that players that encounter their findings in the future know who came across them first. This evokes a sense of being a part of a larger community of explorers and researchers, which is technically true. Traditional multiplayer has also been added to the game since its launch, along with hub areas in which larger groups of players can interact. These elements combine to foster a feeling of community that will almost certainly be absent in Starfield. That isolation will make exploring the vast universe feel more empty, and is part of the reason why other space RPGs like Mass Effect limit planets where players can land. Though the player character in Starfield will inevitably feel more unique, and will have a larger personal impact on the worlds they traverse, maintaining that fantasy across a thousand planets will be an arduous task.
Starfield and No Man's Sky may seem similar at face value, but they are more different than they are alike. Many of the mechanics causing comparisons between the two were added to No Man's Sky as additional content post-launch, as part of its developers' commitment to delivering on the game's early promises. No Man's Sky has changed significantly over the years, becoming more of an RPG at every turn, but at its core it is still about exploration and discovery above all. Starfield, meanwhile, will likely make role-playing elements its highest priority from the beginning. Only time will tell how well Starfield executes on its vision, but its separation from No Man's Sky offers hope that the two games will provide substantially different versions of the fantasy of exploring the unknown reaches of the universe.
